New Britain School Board Gives Good Marks To Superintendent

New Britain Superintendent Nancy Sarra gives a motivational talk to about 600 seventh-graders earlier this school year. A new evaluation of Sarra’s job performance concludes she did well in getting the 10,000-student system to adapt to a major overhaul in the past year. (Cloe Poisson / Hartford Courant)

As Superintendent Nancy Sarra oversees a reorganization of the city’s school system, the board of education has concluded she’s doing a good job.

A new evaluation of Sarra’s job performance concludes she did well in getting the 10,000-student system to adapt to a major overhaul in the past year.

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“Ms. Sarra has done a wonderful job guiding the district through the changes,” the school board wrote in its review.

“We know that with change comes resistance, and with resistance adversity, but we are confident that (the) larger focus is on student achievement and success,” according to the evaluation.

Sarra was hired in 2016 to turn around a school system that struggles with disappointing test scores in elementary grades and yearly funding shortfalls.

Faced with two consecutive years of no-increase budgets, last winter Sarra announced an overhaul of class scheduling, elective offerings and teacher assignments. All of the change is aimed at boosting student performance and focusing attention on science, technology, engineering, arts and math, she has said.

“Our continued focus on equity and enrichment requires us to shift our thinking and practices to better serve our students, families and staff,” Sarra said Wednesday.

“The past school year was about navigating the structural changes that were needed to continue this work,” she said.

Unions and parents balked last spring, saying they hadn’t been part of the planning. But Sarra appears to have won them over in the past half-year, and union leaders have called on their members to work with her redesign.

When 1,000 teachers and aides gathered for convocation just before the new school year began last month, Sarra said she’d been working to improve her communications — and pledged to continue.

“The need for two-way, honest communication and feedback among all stakeholders continues to be our focus because the success of our students depends on our willingness to reflect on our practices and adjust when something isn't working,” she said Wednesday.

Sarra is paid $171,000 a year, roughly $30,000 less than her predecessor, Kelt Cooper. Her contract runs through the end of June 2019, and she and the board are discussing an extension to June 2020.

New Britain recruited Cooper from Texas in 2012 and looked for rapid improvement, but ended with frosty relations between Cooper and the school board and between Cooper and Mayor Erin Stewart. After he left, the school system promoted Sarra, a longtime New Britain educator, instead of hiring another outside candidate.

“We continue to encourage the superintendent to work diligently with the stakeholders and board members to spread the vision of the district,” the board said in its evaluation.